JEFF EDELSTEIN: The Tir Na Nog in Trenton: Close to my heart

The Tir Na Nog bar in Trenton holds a special place in my heart. See, I moved down here in January 1999 to take a job at The Trentonian. I knew no one. So I’d go to work, and then I’d go back to my apartment. Fun.

Later that month, I was informed I’d be working the night shift through February. Shift ran 4 p.m. until the second edition of the paper was published, usually around 12:15 a.m. or so.

First night, couple of the guys invited me to join them for a few drinks. They did it most every night after work. Little bar called they called “the Nog.”

So I went. Innocent little Jeff went to the Nog.

Advertisement

I loved it. Drinking Guinness, smoking cigarettes, walking in with a few of tomorrow’s papers to share with the clientele … I felt great. Like a real newspaperman, drinking, smoking, talking, carousing. All that was missing was the fedora hat with a “Press” card stuck in the middle. Loved that place. Loved working nights. I felt at home, both in the bar — a true “everyone knows your name” place — and at work.

A few months later, I met a woman at the copy machine of The Trentonian. She was trying to copy something. It wasn’t working. I helped. We started dating. My nights at the Nog were fewer. Some 14 years later, me and the copy machine gal have two kids.

...

Same year, 1999, and up in Somerville, Massachusetts, a guy named Todd Faulkner just got finished running a St. Patrick’s Day road race. Faulkner, who is a quarter Irish — the “best side,” he says, as he considers himself an Irishman through and through — stops in a bar with friends. The name of this Boston-area bar? Tir Na Nog. Faulkner meets a woman, Maureen. Two years later, he asks her to marry him. Where did he do this? Do I really need to tell you? At the bar they met at. The Tir Na Nog.

…

I stop in to the Tir Na Nog every so often these days, mostly for “professional” purposes. But somehow, my 10-minute stops there seem to last for a few hours. Frank Connell, the longtime bar manager, well … he has a way of keeping your butt on the stool. Hell of a guy, hell of a bartender. It’s one of those places. You sit, you don’t want to leave. I’m not the only one who thinks so. It’s simply one of the best bars in America. It just has … it.

…

But people leave. Don’t need to get into the whole history of the Tir Na Nog — that would take a book, not a newspaper column — but when the original owner, “Irish” Billy Briggs, passed away from cancer in 2008, there was general concern things would never be the same. Then, in recent years, the talk was the bar was going to be sold. Could it possibly retain its flavor with a new owner? Doubts were raised, and with good reason. How could it possibly work?

…

Todd and Maureen moved to the area in 2006. Maureen’s mother was dying of cancer, three months to live. She lived in Toms River, where Maureen grew up. They moved to be closer to her in her final days. She made it another three years.

…

Before the Faulkners moved, they were looking into buying a bar in the Boston area, where they lived at the time. Todd even quit his longtime bank job to bartend and learn the business. The dream of owning a bar didn’t die when they moved to New Jersey. It intensified.